The bodies of eight people, including a pregnant woman, were found this morning by the Italian coastguard aboard a dangerous ship off the island of Lampedusa with 42 survivors.
Five men and three women “died of cold,” according to survivors’ testimonies who informed authorities that a few hours earlier, one of the deceased women had thrown her son – a four-month-old baby – into the sea. , who had also died “of the cold”. Another man jumped into the sea to retrieve the baby’s body, but drowned according to the same testimonies.
The two, the baby and the man who jumped into the sea, are considered “missing” by Italian authorities.
The survivors, who were wet and suffering from hypothermia, were transferred to a patrol vessel that took them to Lampedusa and are currently in the center of Contrada Imbriacola.
The survivors have informed Italian authorities that the precarious ship left the port of Sfax in Tunisia last Saturday.
The Italian prosecutor’s office in Agrigento has launched an investigation into “complicity in illegal immigration and death”.
In the coming hours, the survivors must make formal statements to the Italian judicial authorities.
According to police sources, the ship’s occupants are from Mali, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger, including 10 women (two women are pregnant) and one minor.
The ship had already been spotted on Thursday morning by a Tunisian trawler who radioed for help from the maritime authorities of Malta, where he was at the time.
After requesting help from the Maltese authorities, an Italian patrol was sent to the area where the ship with the eight dead was on board.
A few hours before the rescue of this ship, the Italian Coast Guard rescued another precarious ship with 75 people on board from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Senegal.
Source: DN
